Passing The Torch
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Exiled, heartbroken, but coming to terms with sadness, Rose realises the key to letting go and finding happiness. She has to steal equipment, venture into the jungle, befriend a mad MD and pass the torch to someone new.  Oneshot for fans of Rose or Martha


**Again, my brain is all over the place, and a one-shot has gotten in the way of my principal endeavour! Anyway, this is a weird little idea that I had... not sure where it came from. I don't know how plausible or entertaining you'll find it, but it doesn't matter where your Companion loyalties lie - I'm sure you'll wind up liking everyone involved.**

* * *

PASSING THE TORCH

"What are you reading?" Mickey asked. He had happily sipped his Gin and Tonic and then leaned over to see what his very quiet girlfriend was looking at.

Rose had been lost in the book. She looked up, rather startled. "Hm?"

He leaned forward and bent back the book so that he could read the title. And then he sighed. Of course.

"_Parallel Worlds in Practise,_ Rose? Really?" he asked.

She mumbled something about "leave me alone," and pulled her knees up toward her chest, turned toward the aeroplane window and grasped her book more tightly, getting lost once more.

"Rose, we're on holiday," he said, exasperated. "We're doing this _for you_, can't you give it a rest?"

She ignored him and kept reading.

"_Ladies and gentlemen,"_ the air hostess' voice said over the tannoy. _"We will be beginning our final approach to Honolulu in twenty minutes' time. If you need to get up, stretch your legs, use the lavatory, we ask that you do so in that time. The Captain will switch on the safety belt sign, and at that time, we will need you to return to your seats."_

Mickey looked at his watch. He attempted to change the subject and get Rose excited about Hawaii. He clapped his hands a laughed. "Just think, half an hour, babe, and we'll be in sunny Honolulu! Be on the beach in an hour! Four hours to Hawaii from London – I bloody _love _the Concord. So glad they kept it going in this world!"

Rose did not stir.

"Rose?"

Nothing.

"Rose, look at me."

Annoyed, she turned her head and said, "What?"

He looked back at her, and suddenly no longer had any idea what to say. He opened his mouth, but no thoughts formed at all. At last, he said, "Excuse me." And he threw off his safety belt and was up. She went back to her book.

Under her breath, she read aloud, _"The great mystics of the East may just have had it right, as well as the great scientists of the West. Everything is connected, everything is the same, we are all one consciousness, from one atom. All Creation born from a single great blast, if you will._

"_Another theory would suggest separately, though not contradictorily, that all things operate on a frequency, and we who are in this physical dimension may only perceive what oscillates on our frequency. Once this theory of quantum physics was put forth, it was suggested by many, both religious and secular alike, that an afterlife had been proven, that death simply allows us (or our consciousness) to pass from one frequency to the next. Into a parallel world. Perhaps individuals who, shall we say, oscillate slightly off of our frequency may perceive what we call 'ghosts,' or may be what we call 'psychic,' seeing events and visions out of synch, out of time._

"_Every decision we make, all possibilities untapped are a different occurrence, are events nonetheless. It is said that each provides us with its own parallel world, that all worlds occupy the same space, but beat to a different drummer."_

Rose pulled a highlighter from the canvas bag under the chair in front of her and marked over this passage. The blue marker dragged across the page jaggedly, and the tip of Rose's tongue stuck out the side of her mouth as she concentrated, once again, on the words. _Perhaps individuals who, shall we say, oscillate slightly off of our frequency may perceive what we call 'ghosts,' or may be what we call 'psychic…'_ She stared out the window and sighed, contemplating. Who oscillated more "off" in this universe than a person who was from another?

No sooner had she finished the markings than the book was snatched from her hand. "Oi!" she shouted. She looked up.

"Rose, this isn't good for you," Pete Tyler scolded, and sat down in Mickey's previous spot.

"What, Mickey told on me?" she asked. "Bloody hell." She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted.

"He's concerned, love," her dad said. "We all are."

"Yeah, whatever," she muttered. Then quite suddenly, she burst into tears. She hadn't seen it coming, but neither she nor Pete was surprised. "You're all so concerned, but you all don't understand. No one understands!"

"We understand, sweetheart," he assured her. "We've all loved hard and lost. My wife died, remember? She was turned into a Cyberman – you were there. I loved her, and I lost her, and I'd have given anything to have her back…"

"And now you do," Rose whined. "So why can't I?"

He sighed. "I got lucky. Maybe you will too, but you can't waste your life trying to create luck. Allow yourself to be happy."

She sniffled and turned away from him.

* * *

Seven o'clock that evening found Rose Tyler in a purple bathing suit, sitting on the beach watching the sunset. Every now and then a seemingly unwarranted trickle of tears could be seen to emerge from behind her sunglasses just before she'd wipe them away.

She hated the beach. She hated sunset – they both reminded her of something ending. But right now, she hated being with her family even more. They would not allow her to grieve – not even a little. They kept telling her to allow herself to be happy. Stop living in the past or the future and live for today. Be thankful to have loved so well at all.

But those who say it is better to have loved and lost, they had clearly never loved the Doctor.

And once again, she sighed heavily as her father plopped down at her side. "I read the bit that you highlighted. Very interesting, indeed."

She was sullen.

"Rose, there's something I need to tell you about that beach," he said at last. "The one in Norway, I mean."

"What are you on about?"

"See, I never said, love, but… I couldn't see anything."

"What?"

"I'm serious," he said, chuckling. "Your mum saw him, Mickey saw him, but as far as I was concerned, you were talking to air."

Her mouth opened in shock.

"But the Doctor was there, yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah," she told him. "Like a hologram or a projection."

"Oscillating on a frequency I couldn't perceive, because I'm not from _your world_?"

She looked at him and actually smiled slightly. "Yeah, I guess."

"Never made sense before now," he said, and sort of laughed. Then he stopped. He took a deep breath and stared out at the sea. "Would you say that the Doctor's perception is on a different frequency than his universe?"

"He's on all of them, dad," she said. "He can perceive anything."

"Mm-hm, and you're from _his _world, so if he could project again, then you could see him again," Pete said. "Or vice versa."

"Mm-hm."

"You could communicate, talk to each other…" he said. "Might be nice."

"Yeah, exactly."

"I see," he conceded. "I get why you're reading that book. Torchwood has a lot of resources, who knows what they're capable of? Today, tomorrow, someday down the line – the Doctor is worth it."

"Right."

He nodded steadily, pursed his lips in understanding. "So let me ask you something. Why didn't he kiss you then, on that beach? I mean, I couldn't see him, but I also know that I didn't see you kissing air… _that_ I would have remembered."

"Well," she answered, averting her eyes. "Because he was like a ghost. No touch."

"Blimey, that must have been hard," her dad pointed out. "I mean, you love this bloke, yeah? A lot? Like more than you feel you could ever love anything or anyone ever again?"

"Dad, what are you doing to me?"

"I'm just saying, it must have been difficult to stand there and say goodbye, without a hug or a kiss or being able to touch his cheek," he said. "Probably for him too."

"Yeah," she said, thinking now that she saw what he was saying.

He searched her face. He couldn't see her eyes behind those glasses, but it didn't stop him trying. "Rose, think about what you really want. Think about what's possible. Think of what's best for you."

"What's best for me is him."

"Yeah, but it's not possible. Do you really want a relationship with a man you love, and can talk to but can't touch?"

"Better than nothing."

"Okay then. Do you think _he_ really wants that? The Doctor? I'm sure he loves you, Rose, but he's…" Pete exhaled through pursed lips. "He's old, sweetie. He's been around. I'm not saying he's gonna forget you, but you know he needs someone at his side. He travels all over the place, and what's that gonna be like? You pop in for a quick holographic conference while him and the new bird are having breakfast?"

"Dad!"

"Well! Think about it. Could you really handle that? And alternatively, could you really ask him to travel alone, just for you? Just so you can have a chitchat every now and then, and end each conversation crying because he can't kiss you or hold you? Rose. _Think._"

The tears came like rain then. He was chipping away at her hope. It had been a longshot, and a stupid one at that, she knew it. But until now, it was all she had.

"I've said it before, Rose, and now I'm saying it again. Allow yourself to be happy."

She sobbed. Sadness was literally leaking from her.

He leaned over and stroked her shoulder blades. "But failing that," he told her gently. "Allow _the Doctor_ to be happy."

* * *

A kind of epiphany had been reached that day. What was it about major emotional developments, Rose Tyler and beaches? She had a surprisingly nice time in Hawaii, even letting Mickey talk her into sharing a hotel room.

Rose felt that she could finally see the big picture. Her dad had pointed out some things about the Doctor, the nature of his life and times, and she saw that she'd been short-sighted. She knew now what she needed to do. But she'd have to do it in secret – as she'd been feeling for the past few months, she knew that no-one would understand.

Fifteen days later and they were back home at their palatial estate outside London, and Rose had a Torchwood laptop open on her bed. She was sitting cross-legged, eating Chinese food, holed up doing the same thing for the fifth day in a row, reading reports from around the time when she'd been exiled here, in Pete's World. Finally, she stumbled upon something. It was an account from the day when she'd been on Bad Wolf Bay with the Doctor's hologram.

He had said that day that he'd found a tiny crack in the fabric of reality, and was able to project himself through it, though it took an enormous amount of power. That crack had closed (all too soon), presumably sealing off all channels between his world and hers. That day, though, six other cracks had formed in various parts of the world. Rose wondered if maybe the one in Norway had slammed shut and caused a ripple effect. In any case, Torchwood was monitoring the cracks, but did not deem it particularly vital to address their closure at this juncture. Probably not wise at all, but it could work to her advantage.

There was a new crack in Mallorca, one in Salt Lake City, someplace on the southern African savannah, one in Siberia, one in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean and one in the jungle in Vietnam.

And in Vietnam is where she found Dr. Sidney Doggett. According to Torchwood's database, he was one of several dozen employees who had defected, for one reason or another, to the other side of the void, into her home world, before the breach had been sealed at Canary Wharf. And as it happened, he'd gone just a bit mad several months before that from having been held hostage by the Fracktedd Race and tortured for information. From his photo, he was a slight man, fifty-or-so years old, though the age on his face shone beyond its years. He had a goatee and an elongated head, and according to the stats, he was no taller than she. He had been trained at Oxford as a doctor of internal medicines, and had been recruited by Torchwood in the late 1980's. His "defection" was an act of deep cover to escape the wrath of the Fracktedd, and he'd gone to Vietnam under the name of Dr. Melvin Blackburn, in order to avoid crossing paths with his parallel self in London.

She didn't fancy dealing with someone with so many issues, but he was from Pete's World, currently in her home world, and he was near a breach. She'd be able to talk to him. In theory, anyway.

* * *

She made up a story. She was going on a retreat with a group, for some Buddhist meditation and some "get back to nature" mojo. Her parents and Mickey were reluctant to let her go to the third world by herself, but she wasn't budging. Given her new-found zen, she knew it was the right thing for her.

And so, having lied to almost everyone she loved, and with a knot in her stomach, she boarded the Concord once more and disembarked in Ho Chi Minh City. She was armed with a backpack full of clothes, a sleeping bag and tent, some money, her Torchwood laptop, and a strange device that had been very difficult to explain coming through security at Heathrow and customs on the other end. She'd told them it was an air ioniser, and she had the paperwork to prove it. Really, it was an experimental astral projection machine that Torchwood had been working on, and she had abused her authority to steal.

She spent her first day visiting hospitals. She knew it was unlikely that a man in another universe would just randomly see her, and vice versa. But it was good for getting a feel for the Vietnamese hospital culture, which, she felt she could assume, was similar in her home world. She was surprised to find very few Western doctors or nurses in any of the urban med centres. Most of the professionals here were locals. She needed to think outside the box.

She spent her second day in her hotel room surfing the net. She found the names of a half-dozen organisations that employ Western doctors in places like Vietnam – meaning third-world. She used Torchwood's database to pinpoint, to the best of her abilities without the brain of a Time Lord for guidance, the locale of the dimensional crack in the jungle. The ideal scenario would be to find Dr. Doggett (or Blackburn, whatever) very near the crack at a medical outpost, so she resolved to start at the facilities closest to where she believed the breach to be. Might as well come at it with optimism.

She spent her third day in taxis, buses, trains and finally, horse-drawn carriage, getting to the Catholic Charities Medical Outpost in the depths of the green, green wild. The doctors and nurses here were all priests and nuns, a European hodgepodge. She asked for a tour, and a Welshman was all too happy to show her around, given her familiar accent, and the touch of home that she represented. That night, in the tent with the nuns, she decided clandestinely to try the device.

The calibration was made for projection to her home world, and stood in the beam of light that emanated from the ocular appendage. Her view of the world changed slightly. Everything looked artificial, see-through, just like the Doctor had looked on the beach when she first spotted him. The signal wasn't great, but it would do. She must have been fairly close in determining where the crack was, otherwise she wouldn't even see it _this _clearly!

Rose looked about at the nuns. The one sleeping nearest to her had been an Italian named Olivia – Rose remembered her because she'd found her so strikingly beautiful. Now, in her place, in the see-through world, was an older woman whom Rose did not recognise. Without moving from her position, she looked around the room, and did not see Olivia anywhere. In her homeworld, which she was now seeing due to the astral projection machine, Olivia's path had not brought her to this particular outpost. Interesting! This was exactly the sort of thing that Rose had been hoping to see!

She decided not to take a chance on sneaking into the priests' tent. She reckoned it was safe to assume that Dr. Doggett wouldn't have become a priest anyhow.

She left the outpost the next day and began to cover miles, with the help of Torchwood's GPS tracker in the laptop's software. She was searching in a large circle round the area where the crack must be. The Westerners were happy to help her. Her demeanour was disarming, and her equipment looked official, and they were glad to see someone other than an ailing Vietnamese or a hard-boiled medic grace their doorways. She always graciously asked for a place to stay, graciously offered to donate to the cause, and then everyone graciously said goodbye.

The fifth post she checked was a facility belonging to _Médecins Sans Frontières_, Doctors Without Borders. This was where her luck changed. During the night, as always, she got up and tried out the device. This post was huge – there were twenty-five doctors, one-hundred-thirty-eight nurses, and a cadre of twelve medical students. She stood in the centre of all seven sleeping tents, one-by-one, and searched for Dr. Doggett's haggard face on the other side of the void.

And in the seventh tent, she found him. In Pete's World, a female doctor was lying on that cot, sound asleep, but in her home world, Doggett was sitting with his back against the wall, staring at his feet. He happened to look up, startled, as he caught sight of Rose.

"Ugh! Blimey, you scared the daylights out of me!" he said.

"Melvin, who you talking to?" one of the men nearby asked, stirring in his sleep.

"Her!" Doggett said, pointing at Rose.

The other guy looked. "There's nothing there, you nutter, now go to sleep. The newbies have their first clinicals tomorrow."

Doggett looked at Rose. "Why can't he see you?"

"Why don't you tell me, Dr. Doggett?" she suggested.

He scooted to the foot of his cot, very near to the projection of her. "No! My name is Blackburn! Dr. Melvin Blackburn. Now go away!"

"Your name is Dr. Sidney Doggett," she said. "You are a defection case from Torchwood, and you're in deep cover…"

"Look, whatever they sent you for, I'm not coming back," he hissed at her, his voice shaking. "So you can forget it. Don't waste your time!"

"Torchwood didn't send me," she said. "My name is Rose Tyler, and yes, I work for Torchwood, but I'm here on a personal mission. And I need your help."

"I don't even know you!"

"Please, Dr. Doggett," she begged. "I am here for a good cause, a very, very personal cause. I'm trying to do something good for someone I love very much. Have you ever been in love, sir?"

He sighed heavily. " Why me? I'm half mad!"

From somewhere else in the room, someone scolded Dr. Doggett for talking to no-one.

"I know," she said. "That's why I need you. Well, not entirely. You're ideal because you're from another world, where I live now, and you're close to the crack, which means you can see projections from my side that others can't."

"I _must_ be mad, because that actually made sense."

"I am not able to _act_ in your world, only to project, which is why I'm doing… well, all of this. Will you help?"

"Depends. What are you trying to do?"

"I'm here on a recruitment mission."

* * *

Dr. Doggett had told Rose that he'd be in the med students' first clinicals tomorrow morning starting at seven. From Pete's World, she learned that said clinicals would not begin until next week, and that they'd be setting up a tent for it just to the east of the storage facilities. Perfect.

She went out and stood in an empty patch of vines on the jungle floor, exactly where it had been described that the tent would be pitched. She projected, and found herself in the middle of a semi-chaotic, transparent room filled with medical equipment, medics running about and Vietnamese patients with their children, some of them crying.

They walked right through, her, as none of them could see her. Except for one person, who saw her and sighed.

She moved the projection device twenty feet to her right, and appeared at Doggett's side. He glanced at her, tried to ignore her presence, and continued what he was doing. He'd been standing over an elderly man, holding court with a group of six medical students. Each of them had a lapel pin of their home country. There were three Brits, two French and an American. All three of the Brits were women, which Rose was glad to see. One of them was blonde like her, quite tall, wiry, severe-looking. Another was a plump East Indian with a big smile and a giggle that wouldn't stop. The third was a small, watchful black woman who had not yet made a sound nor changed her observant expression. She focused on these three women. She resolved not to learn their names, she simply decided to refer to them as A, B, and C, respectively.

Doggett was talking about the dangers of tropical heat where the elderly are concerned. The man on the gurney had suffered heatstroke and had been near death when his daughters had dragged him here. However, heatstroke shares some common symptoms with malaria, quite common in jungle-dwellers, and it was good practise to check for it before treating a patient for heatstroke.

A nurse was standing by, sterilising a needle with a bunsen burner. She handed the equipment to Dr. Doggett, who then held it out to the students. "Who'd like to be the first?"

Rose said to him, "No, give it to one of the Brits."

"What?" he said.

The students squinted at his peculiar behaviour, having said "What?" into thin air.

"Give it to one of the British students," she said. "I want to see them first."

"Er, sorry," he covered. "Why don't you have a go?" He handed the needle off to student A, who looked at him harshly, then took it.

As she prepped the patient's arm for extraction, Rose asked, "How's she doing?"

"Fine, so far," he said.

And then the little sac began to fill tragically quickly.

"What's it doing?" asked student B. "It shouldn't be doing that."

"Haemophiliac," student C said. The French students tittered at each other, and the American reached under the table for a reference manual.

"No, no!" Doggett scolded. "He's elderly and he's bleeding! He could die – you can't be reaching for your textbooks! Think, my children! Think think! What do you do? What _do _you do?"

Student A changed the sac and shouted at one of the French boys to fetch more.

"That's not going to solve the problem, it's just going to keep the linens clean," Doggett pointed out.

From then on, the students began shouting at each other.

Except for one. Rose watched as British Student C very quietly and quickly ran out the door.

"We need a recombinant!"

"Let's think, antibodies, antibodies…"

"Oh, great idea, let's just cook up some antibodies with our magic wand!"

"Not helping, wanker!"

"We need Factor Eight."

"Or Factor Nine."

"Is this Haemophilia A or B?"

"Does it matter?"

"We don't have Eight or Nine, not at this facility…"

"Yeah, we'd have to go to Ho Chi Minh to get it…"

"By then the old guy will have bit it!"

"Time is running out!"

"Change the sac again!"

"We need porcine Factor Eight – is there a pig around?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"That's asinine!"

Rose hated to see all the blood, and she hated to see an old man lying on the table dying while a trained doctor stood by and watched the students fight. But, she supposed, this is how they learn, and she really didn't think that Doggett would allow the man to die.

After an uncomfortable few minutes had passed with the newbies sniping at each other, a voice rang out from the entrance. "Sterilise a syringe!" It was Student C, the small black woman with the watchful eye.

"What? Why?" asked the American.

"Just do it!" she screamed out. "Do _something_ useful instead of just standing there bitching at each other, will you?"

The American turned to the bunsen burner, unpeeled a new syringe and held the needle in the fire for about ten seconds. Then he handed the syringe to Student C with a frightened expression.

"I need a swab," she said to her fellow students.

She took the syringe, dipped it in a small bottle carrying a greenish-yellow liquid, which she'd brought back with her from wherever she'd gone. She filled the syringe, and plunged the needle into the vein where one of her comrades had cleaned his arm.

"The bleeding is slowing!" Student A said.

"All right, friends," Doggett said, taking the blood extractor from the patients arm. "Please tie that off and give him a proper bandage. What have we learned here?"

No one said anything.

He put his hand on Student A's shoulder. "She filled five sacs full of the patient's blood inside of three minutes, as a result of a very small prick intended to take a blood sample. This was supposed to be a routine clinical, whereby the med students, you lot, take the blood and analyse it yourselves. Today was supposed to be about the _science_ of being a doctor, not about crisis management. But guess what? Being a doctor is both, and most of the time, you cannot compartmentalise. There is science and there are crises. Today, we saw it happen at once. And who gets the gold star?"

They all looked at Student C. She smiled weakly.

He moved to put his arm around her in a proud father sort of way. "Grape seed oil! Promotes clotting! Mimics the Factor drugs in the bloodstream! Inspired, truly!"

"Thank you sir," she said calmly.

"Grape seed oil," he repeated in disbelief. "From our very kitchens."

"I'm sorry," said the American. "I wasn't aware that this was midwife training."

"Do not knock the home remedy, my Yankee friend," Doggett said. "This man's imminent death has now been averted."

British Student B smiled at C. "How did you even know they had grape seed oil in the kitchens?"

Student C shrugged. "I keep my eyes open. I saw it last week when it was my turn to ladle potatoes."

"And you filed it away under _useless facts for the taking?"_ the American sneered.

Student C crossed her arms over her chest and looked annoyed. "Why would you bother coming all the way around the world, just to continue to think in the same way you always have?"

The French students tittered at each other once again. Doggett asked if there was a problem.

"No, sir," one of the French boys said. "But… isn't the kitchen across the complex?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"It's just… that's a quarter mile. _Zut alors,_ you can run!" he said to Student C. She smiled.

"Fabulous," Rose said to Doggett. "I want her."

* * *

"You want her for what?" he was asking, outside the fitness tent. He'd agreed to meet Rose there at an appointed time in the middle of the day. Student C and a male student from Canada were inside, hooked to machines, running on the treadmill like hamsters.

"Never mind," Rose said. "The less you know, the less insane you'll feel. Did you ask her the questions?"

"Yes," he said. "She's the adventurous type – travelled a lot with her parents when she was a kid, especially in South America."

"And the weird stuff?"

"She believes in extraterrestrial life," he said, nodding, as if it were a stupid answer to a stupid question.

"Love life?"

"Doesn't have a boyfriend, doesn't feel she has time. She likes them tall and thin, though. I had to create a whole other ruse with a third student to get that info. A man in my position can't just _ask_ a girl that, especially when I don't even know why it matters. Why _does _it matter?"

"What did you tell her about the mission?" Rose asked, ignoring Doggett's question.

"I told her it was a dangerous trek into the jungle to gather the biggest, baddest mosquitos on Earth to use as one of those radical, counter-intuitive find-a-cure experiments to combat malaria. But I said it requires a lot of climbing, so that's why there's this endurance test."

"And she went for it?"

"Yeah," he said. "They both did. I had to bring in a second student, just so it wouldn't look suspicious. You know, whatever it is you're recruiting for, you might check out that Canadian kid who's in there with her. He could give her a run for her money."

"No, I need a girl. A woman."

"All right, suit yourself."

"So they're running right now. How's she doing?"

"She's incredible, she's like a bloody cheetah. She's gone at full pelt now for over a mile and a half, and she hasn't complained yet. She's five-foot-two, but is sustaining seven miles per hour. This girl is in great shape."

"Okay, here's what I need you to do. It's the last leg of my personal mission, and then I will leave you alone forever."

"What is it?" he sighed.

"Well, first of all, can you tell me when she's scheduled to go home to England?"

"In two weeks," Doggett told her. "I'm supposed to help choose a venue for her final internship."

"Do you still have access to Torchwood's files?"

"Torchwood's gone underground," he answered. "They're all secretive and weird now. And tiny. It's a nightmare getting in."

"What about UNIT?"

"They're easier to hack," Doggett shrugged.

"I want you to find out where trouble's brewing, a hospital, hospice, med centre of some sort, and at all costs, I need to you to place her there."

"You want me to find alien activity near a medical centre, and then put her in danger intentionally?"

Rose thought about this. "Sort of. But it'll be fine. Middle of London, alien activity… someone's _bound_ to show up and help. She won't be on her own."

"Okay. I don't suppose, if I asked for the eightieth time what this is all about now, you'd tell me?"

"Sorry. It's confidential. Just know that you're doing something good for your world. There are certain people who just shouldn't be alone."

Doggett did not understand that statement at all, but he shrugged and filed it away, along with the eight million other things about the last twenty years of his life that made very little sense.

* * *

One week later, Rose appeared at Doggett's side as he sat in a makeshift office that the doctors sometimes used. She pretty much scared the hell out of him again.

"Hiya," he breathed. "What's new?"

"Well, you'll be interested to know that that man, the haemophiliac, died in my world. The student I like, the one who found the grape seed oil, is not in this facility on my side. No one thought of what to do, so he just bled out."

"And the attending physician?"

"I'm not sure what happened," she said. "I wasn't there – I just heard about it."

"Wow."

"Yeah, that's why we like her. Any news from hacking?" she wanted to know.

"There's a plasmavore headed for Earth, and UNIT's been tracking it. I thought it might be a good one to follow, since plasmavores drink blood. Torchwood found one camping out in a blood bank once, so…" he said. "But anyway, it got lost once it came into the atmosphere."

"Damn," Rose said.

"It might be okay," he told her. "Because now, I'm looking for evidence of plasma coils. It's a trace signature that the plasmavores leave behind. It's invisible to the human eye, but anyone with the right type of scanner could pick it up. Blimey. I wish I was there. UNIT are morons. I could pick them up faster with my toaster."

"So what are you going to tell her?" Rose asked.

"Well… just watch."

Student C walked in then and sat down.

"Good morning, sir," she said. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes," he said, trying to sound professional. "I just wanted to let you know… well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I've decided to cancel the malaria research, so I will not be needing your services in the jungle this week."

"Oh, that's disappointing," she answered, though Rose could tell from her expressive eyes that she was a lot more than disappointed.

"But the good news is that I'm quite close to finding you a post in London," he announced.

"Great," Student C said. "Narrowed it down, then."

Doggett pulled his laptop closer and squinted at the screen. Rose did the same, though none of the statistics showing made any sense to her. "It looks like… oh! Royal Hope."

"Okay, lovely. You just decided that now?"

"Well, I was waiting for certain criteria, certain information to come in and yes… Royal Hope. You'll start in ten days."

"Thank you, sir. Anything else?"

"No, that's all. Thanks for your hard work."

Student C smiled and left.

Doggett turned to Rose. "Happy now?"

She contemplated. "Yes, in a manner of speaking. Thank you for your help."

"Sure."

"I'd shake your hand if I could."

"It's all right – I'm a doctor. I'd just have to wash them anyway."

"Then I guess this is goodbye," Rose said.

"By the way, the girl's name is…"

"I don't want to know!" Rose shouted, just before disappearing.

"…Martha Jones," he finished. "Oh well."

END


End file.
